Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
That’s Not the Video We Were Looking For
On September 15, Ronald Davis lost his life after being shot by Steven Mattson, a St. Paul, MN, police officer. Mr. Davis decided to use his vehicle to ram Ofc. Mattson’s squad car. After hitting the squad car, Davis ran towards Mattson with a knife and attempted to stab him.
Why the late Davis decided to attack Mattson will never be known, but why community activists took to the streets to demand justice for Ronald Davis is only too well-known to street cops. Davis was black and Mattson is white. That’s all community activists needed to know. They are woke, and now they need to awaken the community and demand justice. Mattson may be awakened in the days to come from nightmares as he relives the incident.
The St. Paul Police Department had stated that Davis had tried to stab the officer; the word went out from activists that Davis was not armed. Some said that they didn’t believe he was armed. A week went by and the decision was made to release the body-cam video of the attack to the public.
“So this is a reminder to the police that, yes, Ronald’s life mattered — but also to the community to keep them aware,” organizer Monique Cullars-Doty said. “Saying, okay, something here has happened. A man’s life was taken and it’s not okay.”
After the body-cam video was made public, the usual suspects began criticizing Mattson for not attempting to deescalate the situation before shooting Davis.
I have inserted the body-cam video into the essay that includes the audio. The language and images are graphic, and they are disturbing. Mattson was fighting for his life and deleting the audio sanitizes the incident, it turns the incident into an academic exercise. From start to finish, the incident only takes minutes. The second-guessing and the criticism goes on forever.
.
Published in Policing
Isn’t it amazing how the left (and BLM in particular) demanded all police departments use body cameras to record how racist the cops were. Instead, the general public has seen firsthand how much crap the police put up with, but they’ve also seen how most officers have no choice but to use deadly force.
The irony is in spite of concrete video proof, they still cling to the “racist white cop shoots unarmed black man” narrative.
Mr. Davis got justice, quite properly delivered by Officer Mattson.
Do not misinterpret this to mean that I favor vigilante justice against violent criminals who can reasonably be taken into custody. In this instance, the office plainly faced a clear and present danger, justifying the use of deadly force.
A large fraction of our Black community desperately wants to find its problems anywhere but in its mirrors. Lifestyles and moral choices matter. /:
And now defense attorneys don’t want that video used in court because it doesn’t help their clients.
The origination of BLM came from the Trayvon Martin case. The president of the United States at that time made it his intention to create a racial conflict in our country. He assigned his attorney general and all of the power of the federal law enforcement infrastructure to throw gasoline on the fire.
Hollywood film director Joel Gilbert has a documentary out that explains it all.
All based on a lie.
https://www.thetrayvonhoax.com/
I’m glad Officer Mattson is alive.
As usual, the #BLM crowd dehumanizes not only Mattson (“White Cop”) but also Ronald Davis (“Black Man”). There is no mystery in why Mattson shot Davis: Davis was trying, quite earnestly if inexplicably, to kill him. Davis’ motive matters not because it will make sense to us, but because knowing it might give us a clue as to what went wrong in his life and which system, at what point, failed?
Was it the family system? Or the educational…political (duh)…social services…juvenile justice…adult justice…medical…mental health….systems?
How do I know that a system somewhere failed? Because an American citizen in 2019 attacked a uniformed, armed police officer.
Such an attack is, by definition, a crazy thing to do.
So the first hypothesis to be considered is that Mr. Davis was mentally ill, either organically or because he had induced a temporary mental illness in himself by, for example, taking drugs. These two states are strongly correlated even with violent resistance to arrest (sane, sober people comply) let alone with unprovoked attacks on cops.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the #BLM people will shrilly demand that St. Paul’s police officers get dragged through another useless seminar on Implicit Bias. Maybe—maybe!—these will be lucky enough to be offered a new round of crisis intervention training instead. (The latter is at least occasionally useful, though it would not have saved Mr. Davis’ life.)
But Mr. Davis is, as we all should know by now, irrelevant. His life doesn’t matter. Only his death matters, and only because he is black and the hand that pulled the trigger was white.
Had he jumped off a bridge, shot himself, cut his own throat or injected himself with one of any number of available substances or been shot and killed under identical circumstances by a black police officer, his death— like all such deaths —would have been met with indifference.
People of all colors all over the country are suffering and dying because their mental illnesses and addictions are left untreated. Their abandonment excites no urgent cries for reform, no demonstrations, no “die-ins” or even ersatz grief from the social justice crowd, though even the anti-gun folk concede that most gun deaths are suicides. And plenty of “racist” police shootings turn out to be suicides too.
Body cam video will certainly be a part of pre-trial evidentiary hearings. They have a limited field of view. I have seen some where the gun that has come out of the waist band is not visible at the start of an incident.
Defense attorneys certainly make sure their client’s are well dressed for the trial. In some cases they have no desire for jurors to see their client committing the actual crime. Many defendants at the time the crime was committed look like a refugee from the set of the Road Warrior, not for an appearance in the pages of GQ .
I’ll bet some slick lawyer will say the camera footage cannot be released because his client owns his image and hasn’t given permission . . .
Evil is another explanation. Positing mental illness or addiction as the principal cause may be distracting our attention from the true problem.
I find it rather difficult to distinguish mental illness from what the Bible calls demonic possession. I do agree that drugs are a serious problem, though I think that the use of such drugs (other than alcohol) is part of the Biblical prohibition against what is commonly translated as “witchcraft.”
You can hear the dire anguish in the Police Officer’s voice. That was not something he ever wanted to do, shoot somebody. How did the back of Davis’ car get smashed up when the patrolman was going in a different direction?
I believe the officer’s car was at a stop sign when Mr. Davis decided to ram the squad car.
Not the voice of someone who wanted to kill that day. Probably just wanted his shift to end and go home to have a cold one . . .
I worked in a restaurant in New Orleans for a while, and the best cook in the place, Jay, and I used to joke a lot about how he or I could shoot anybody of our respective races, and nobody would really care. Yet all hell would be broken loose if we shot each other.
I remember one night, he got held up late and wouldn’t be able to catch the bus, meaning he’d have to wait for a cab. As a young-looking black man, waiting for a cab could be a long time waiting in the tough city of New Orleans (cabdrivers in Nola aren’t white). But he said an interesting thing: “I’m gonna be waiting out there for an hour, and you can thank Michael Brown for that.” Eventually somebody said they could give him a ride!
These protesters have so very little to offer the people they claim to care for dearly. And these criminals cause so much more damage than is seen.
Doug,
I know when I talk pure philosophy most everyone’s eyes are glazing over hoping I’ll stop. However, what happens when the left adopts fully a mentality that says “facts don’t matter, only the narrative matters”? What happens when this attitude is used to promote hatred of our society, it’s traditions, laws, and even those who must try to keep order?
The facts of Trayvon mattered. The facts of Michael Brown mattered. Yet, from the President of the United States on down a consistent attempt to ignore the facts and weave a narrative that one political faction found useful was in effect. A news media with even a minority of objective reporting would have been a check on this. Unfortunately, except for the alternative news sources on the web, etc. these lies were amplified by the news media.
Weirdly, the police officer’s best friend at this point may be his body camera. It may save his entire career. This is a pathetic substitute for a society that would still care about truth & justice. The philosophy that interests me directly opposes the deconstructionist lunacy that says “facts don’t matter, only the narrative matters”. My philosophy also asserts personal moral responsibility for one’s actions and society’s collective ethical responsibility to protect its citizens.
We need to take back the Universities because our society is rotting from the head. This will take time. The illness didn’t happen overnight and the cure won’t either. Unfortunately, in the meantime, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, I have nothing to offer you but blood, sweat, tears, and toil.
Please believe that there are still those who understand and care.
Regards,
Jim
I was with that demand because I figured it would be a boon for most officers. It does seem that stories have quieted a bit.
Doug, thank you for this post. Because of our Lame Stream Media, many of us in MN would never have seen this video, at least not with the audio, without your having provided it!
I’ve always thought body cams exonerated more officers than it could possibly have condemned. This is partly because I spend a lot of time around police officers, watching what they do, and very rarely does it look even slightly problematic. For the most part, they are nicer to obnoxious people than I would be inclined to be, are able to switch mental gears quickly (notice Officer Mattson switching from combat mode to rescue mode (“have them stage rescue…”) and with a bit of experience can distinguish between victim and perpetrator at a glance when I find I am quite likely to mistake one for the other.
They get trained for this, of course, and the training works, especially if the spirit of their department aligns with it.
I read that officer Mattson was a newcomer to law enforcement, with less than a year on the job. He did a good job—he told the perpetrator to drop the weapon many times, and he shot twice and true.
I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but I’m glad he made it and won’t be on that [CoC] wall.
An unbelievable, belligerent, fierce attack. Can you imagine going from stopping at a four-way intersection to fighting for your life and having to take another’s, in 30 seconds? God Bless Mr Mattson.
This incident reminded me of so many like it that I witnessed in my 45 years of teaching in predominantly black areas. There was an assumption immediately whenever an altercation occurred that the white person was responsible for the problem. What was far worse was the white school administrators tended to side with the complainant. The assumption was that white privilege was a leading factor and that a school principal had to take the side of a minority person to “balance” the scale. I am sure that police officers make the choice to risk their own lives rather than react as Officer Mattson did out of fear of the consequences.
Back in 1967 in Ocean Hill-Brownsville I was teaching in PS 28K. I intercepted a black teenager. who did not belong in my school building, as he was wandering the halls. Physically, he was about my height and probably close to my weight. I was 22 years old at the time. He was probably 16 years old. When I told him that he was inviolation of the law by trespassing in the building, he drew out a knife. I was just outside of my classroom, so I reached in and grabbed a chair to use as shield. I was recently back from active duty in the service and, perhaps, a bit more confident than I should have been. When the young man saw my maneuver he folded his knife, said, We’re cool. and headed for the staircase that would take him out of the building. Even then, in 1967, I had nightmares thinking about what would have happened if I had had to injure this kid in order to defend myself. The headlines would have been “Teacher assaults student with chair.” The fact that the kid was an unauthorized trespasser on school grounds, carrying a knife and threatening a teacher would likely have not made it into the text of the report. I was very relieved that nothing came of it. For the rest of my career I examined every potential situation, and there were many, with a weather eye towards the way in which my actions would be judged by someone whose life had not been put in danger. It never made me not act, but it definitely shaped the ways in which I covered my own actions to insure they could not be twisted to make me the culprit. One very certain thing is that even though those f-bombs were shooting around my brain, I never gave them voice, since no matter the situation, if you said something inappropriate to a student, it would come back to haunt you in the principal’s office.
There are times when exclaiming; Golly Gee Whiz is just not enough. Love your comment, and good for you for confronting the trespasser. You were trying to protect yourself and your students.
Monday, December 15th, 2014 Isegoria.net website
Back when Todd G. was in law school, he had a wonderful opportunity to teach his classmates about use of force:
I’m starting to think anyone with a CWP should consider one. Insurance isn’t enough . . .
I remember reading somewhere (maybe on Ricochet) a discussion a student had with his permit instructor about why 21 feet (7 yards) was an extremely close distance to use. The instructor had the student stand back to back with him. He told the student when he said “Go”, draw his [empty] weapon and bring it up as if to fire, then say “Stop”. The instructor said “Go” and ran as fast as he could away from the student. When the student said stop, he turned and saw the instructor was further away than 7 yards.
The instructor made the point to the class they may not have the time they think to draw a weapon and fire, based on ability, the type of weapon, and where it’s carried.
I also seem to remember reading 7 yards was the average distance for most gunfights. I’m sure our current and former law enforcement Ricochetti have more accurate information . . .
I had to qualify quartely on the range. Qualification started with from holstered – 2 rounds center mass in two seconds or less – 2 feet from the target. One officer I know traded about 10 rounds with an outlaw biker seperated by no more than the width of the trunk of his police car. The biker did not survive the encounter. I don’t know what the distance stats are today, but at one time the majority of shootings took place within 3 feet of the perpatrator.
Yup. Last time I went to firearms training, I put a hurtin’ on the targets at 9 feet or less. The instructors were encouraging. “That’s close quarters range,” they said. “That’s where most shootings happen.”
If you’ll notice, one disadvantage that Officer Mattson had was that he couldn’t retreat—the driver’s side door was in the way. Had the door, for some reason, not been an issue, he might have b0ught himself a bit more time by moving to the front of the cruiser for cover, but I’m not sure it would’ve made any difference. That guy was committing suicide by cop, IMHO, and he was going to force Mattson to shoot him.